By CAROL SMITH, P-I REPORTER

Updated 10:00 pm, Monday, September 4, 2006

The "Wake-up Wal-Mart" tour made its final stop before an enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd in Seattle on Monday night, putting to bed a 35-day, 19-state campaign designed to pressure the nation's largest private employer to increase its employee wages and benefits and improve its corporate citizenship.

The activist group, which is financed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, brought its red, white and blue "Smiley" bus, festooned with "frowny" faces, to a Town Hall meeting after collecting more than 25,000 signatures from citizens across the country.

"It's really important that people understand our living wages are falling now and many people are struggling -- losing health care, losing pay," said Murray. "Businesses need to be more responsible. We're all part of this."

The Wake-up Wal-Mart group has issued a challenge to the corporate giant to pay its more than 1.3 million workers a living wage, as well as provide them with affordable health insurance.

Monday night's event drew more than 400 supporters -- double the expected number -- most of whom came to hear arguments why Wal-Mart should pay higher wages, offer more affordable health care, protect American jobs and lessen the burden on taxpayers in Washington.

According to event organizers, 3,180 Wal-Mart employees in Washington are on state-funded health care plans because they couldn't afford the company's plan and premiums.

"Wal-Mart offers low prices, and we're not against that, but they're doing it on the backs of the U.S. workers," said Omar Perestrejo, a hotel worker union member, who came to show solidarity. "They're not getting fair wages."

Wal-Mart counters on its Web site that it offers competitive pay, citing its average full-time hourly wage as $10.11. In addition, the company says it helped the average American household save more than $2,300 last year by providing lower-cost goods -- an amount it said was equivalent to at least one year of natural gas and electric bills for many families, or almost half the average tuition at a public university.

Wal-Mart has more than 120 million customers every week, and last year had net income of $10.3 billion, according to the company's Web site. It spent nearly half that -- $4.7 billion -- on benefits for its employees.

The Wake-Up Wal-Mart people say that isn't enough.

A full-time Wal-Mart employee supporting a family of four falls $2,200 a year below the federal poverty line, said campaign spokesman Chris Kofinis.

The group said Wal-Mart could afford to pay its sales clerks $1 more an hour if it raised prices by a half-cent per dollar -- which would bring the cost of a $2.00 pair of socks to $2.01.

The group also has called for zero tolerance on child labor, asking Wal-Mart to institute an independent monitoring program to help stop the exploitation of child labor in the United States and abroad.

The campaign also urged the company to "Buy American" to increase the percentage of "Made in America" goods to help bolster the American work force.